


ashes, ashes, we all fall down

by WonderTwinC



Series: writing exercises [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 17:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5595061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderTwinC/pseuds/WonderTwinC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Alternate Universe for the first season. [trigger warning for mentions of suicide.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	ashes, ashes, we all fall down

Sara stared at the black and white headline of the Starling City Gazette. **  
**

**ONE OF SCPD’S OWN TAKES LIFE AFTER TRAGIC INCIDENT.**

Beneath the headline was five neat paragraphs of varying lengths and two photographs, one of the man in uniform and another of him and his two daughters. Sara stared at her face in the picture, young and full of innocent life and unfulfilled potential with a light smattering of freckles across her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Laurel was on the other side of their father with her trademark smile that crinkled her nose and made her eyes light up, arms wrapped around his waist. She couldn’t remember when the picture was taken - just that it had to have been before she graduated high school by a year or two judging from her hair cut.

Her eyes drifted to the other picture of her father decked out in his full police uniform, cap and all. Even in black and white she knew the exact color of the uniform and the way it felt beneath her fingers as she did laundry or hugged him before he went to work. She ran her fingers lightly over the photograph as her eyes dropped to the actual article itself.

> _Detective Quentin Larry Lance was found in his home by officers responding to a report of a single gunshot fired on saturday night at nine p.m. Officers were forced to break down the front door to gain entrance into the apartment. Detective Lance was found with a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound through the temple. Ballistics confirmed that the wound was consistent with Detective Lance’s service firearm, a Sig Sauer P226._
> 
> _SCPD released a statement earlier this morning ruling the Detective’s death as a suicide. While there was no note left at the scene, sources have revealed that a letter was found at the freshly dug gravesite of his eldest daughter, Dinah Laurel Lance, who was one of the victims of last week’s massive earthquake in The Glades that is being referred to as ‘The Undertaking’. She was twenty six years old._
> 
> _This comes on the heels of Detective Lance’s divorce from his wife, Dinah Lance, after the death of their youngest daughter, Sara Lance, five years ago. She was nineteen at the time of her death. Memorial Services for Detective Lance will be held on Friday at one p.m. He was forty-nine._

The remaining paragraphs detailed his time with the SCPD from his training at the police academy to his rising as one of the most favorable detectives in the force. There was a brief mention of a few months leave he’d taken from the force around two years ago to attend rehab for alcohol abuse. Her eyes lingered over the last two sentences.

> _Detective Lance will be dearly missed by Starling City and the SCPD. He was survived by his ex-wife, Dinah Lance, who now lives in Central City._

She stared at the article in it’s entirety once more, taking in the photos and the headline and the five paragraphs before she folded it up and stuffed it in her trunk under the leather jacket it was too hot to wear this time of year in Nanda Parbat.

The voices that had been in her head since the earthquake quieted to a dull buzz that mimicked the sound of rushing blood in her ears. A part of her had always entertained the idea that one day she’d be able to go back home, to go back to Starling City and be with her sister and her father and her mother, to smell the strawberry shampoo that Laurel favored as she hugged her… to feel her Dad’s arms squeeze her until she couldn’t breath while her mother stroked her hair and whispered how good it was to have her back home.

She’d thought that perhaps one day she’d be able to pick up the pieces of her life and fit them back together enough so that the last five years wouldn’t matter so much once she was standing in the house she remembered, surrounded by the people she loved… but a black and white headline had shattered that illusion.


End file.
